Hello my friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighborhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to our ongoing series,
Abiding in Colossians,
Where we're considering what it means to abide through the lens of Paul's letter to the Colossian church.
So over the past few days,
We've widened our vision somewhat.
We began by noticing what's already growing,
Learning to see life unfolding quietly within us.
And then we moved into steadiness,
Endurance,
And patience as forms of strength.
After that,
Our awareness opened even more outward towards the larger vision of reality itself being held together from within.
And then yesterday,
We considered reconciliation,
That possibility that unity runs deeper than fragmentation.
Today,
As you've guessed,
Our vision is going to shift a little bit again.
But this time,
We're not going further outward,
And not further upward.
This time,
We're going inward.
So before we consider the words of Paul,
I invite you just to still yourself for a moment,
To take a deep breath in and out,
To allow your body,
Your heart,
And your mind to be fully present in this moment.
As we open our ears to hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit,
As we hear Paul's words in Colossians chapter 1,
Verses 21 to 29.
Paul writes,
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind,
Doing evil deeds,
He has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death,
So as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,
Provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard,
Which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.
I,
Paul,
Became a servant of this gospel.
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake,
And in my flesh,
I am completing what is lacking in Christ's affliction for the sake of his body,
That is,
The church.
I became its servant according to God's commission that was given to me for you,
To make the word of God fully known,
The mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations,
But has now been revealed to his saints.
To them,
God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery,
Which is Christ in you,
The hope of glory.
It is he whom we proclaim,
Warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom,
So that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.
So here we reach in this letter what feels like a hinge moment,
Perhaps even the heart of its message.
Paul speaks of a mystery,
A mystery hidden for generations,
A mystery long-sought,
A mystery people imagined might be distant,
Reserved,
Or hidden beyond reach,
And then he names it in a way that is both simple and astonishing.
He says,
Christ in you,
The hope of glory.
Did you get that?
This isn't Christ far away,
Reserved for the future,
Located in just the sacred spaces of life.
Christ in you.
And so the movement we've been making across these days becomes beautifully clear.
Everything that we've explored so far,
The sense of growth,
Endurance,
Cosmic unity,
Reconciliation,
Has been preparing the ground for this realization.
Presence isn't only around us,
It's also within us,
Intimately,
Personally,
And as I say often,
That should change everything.
Because most of us have grown up imagining that God's somewhere beyond us,
Watching us,
Guiding us,
Perhaps even sustaining us,
But ultimately,
From the outside,
External,
We imagine presence as something we approach,
Something we move towards,
Something that remains outside us even when it's close.
But Paul here is suggesting something way deeper.
Not that presence is just near,
But that presence literally dwells within.
Now understand this in a much deeper way too.
Often we think that we have the presence of God,
That we possess it,
Or somehow control it.
But when we talk about this presence dwelling within,
I want you to try and get your head around the idea that it's a dwelling within you,
Or as the word that we like to use in this series particularly,
Abiding within you.
It's that steady presence at the center of your being.
And maybe this is where we begin to shift from observing presence to participation with.
Presence.
Until this point,
We've been observing,
We've noticed growth,
Recognized steadiness,
We've seen unity in the world around us,
But the invitation today becomes a little bit more personal.
Because we're asked here not to simply see,
But to recognize that we are already participants in the life that we've been contemplating.
And this presence isn't something that we visit occasionally,
Or something we pray to from time to time.
It's something that lives within us.
And we live within it.
This is what makes the phrase Christ in you so powerful.
Because it's a lived reality.
A reality that unfolds slowly,
As we learn to listen more deeply to what's happening within us.
Because most of the time,
Our interior life feels incredibly crowded,
Doesn't it?
Thoughts rushing through quickly,
Emotions up and down,
Concerns competing for our attention.
Noise,
Both external and internal,
Fills our awareness all the time.
But beneath that noise,
There is something gentle and quiet and steady,
A stillness,
A stability,
A depth that doesn't fluctuate like our thoughts and all the other things do.
And many traditions speak of this depth.
Some of them call it a center and some call it a ground.
Some refer to it as the place of continuity.
And this passage in Paul's letter invites us to recognize that the inner depth is inhabited,
It's not empty.
Inhabited by presence itself,
Christ within,
Steady,
Present.
Maybe not always obvious or dramatic,
But there,
Patient,
Just sustaining life from within,
Faithfully.
And this shifts away how we usually understand hope.
Because Paul calls this indwelling presence the hope of glory.
And so rather than hope being something like wishful thinking or expectation of something that we hope we want to come,
This hope is a confidence.
And it's a confidence that's got its grounded and rootedness in what is already present.
It's sitting on the knowledge that we're not alone within the universe and we're not alone within ourselves either.
That there's something deeper than our uncertainties and steadier than our emotions,
Something present,
Even when we're distracted and don't notice it's there.
And I wonder sometimes whether this is why the interior awareness does matter.
Because we're learning to notice what's always been there by becoming attentive.
Attentive to the quiet depth beneath the surface of our thoughts.
Attentive to the stillness beneath all the movement.
Attentive to the presence that remains even when everything else feels unsettled.
So today I invite you into that posture of attentiveness.
At some point in the day today,
Allow yourself a few moments of quiet.
To listen inwardly for stillness.
Allow your attention to settle gently like water coming to rest after movement.
And ask yourself the question,
What happens when I trust that presence is already within me?
And when you ask the question,
Just listen.
Because interior listening is about recognizing something that's always been there,
Already alive,
Already sustaining.
And as you carry this awareness into the rest of your day,
Return now and then to the recognition that the mystery we often imagine as distant is already here.
Closer than breath,
Closer than thought.
Christ in you.
The hope of glory.
This is the presence for you to notice.
And may grace,
Peace and love be with you in your noticing and in your holding of that presence today and every day.
Amen.
Amen.
Until tomorrow,
Peace be with you.
